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16 Responses to “Obama At Notre Dame”

“I doubt that Obama even believes this God shit, and is just pandering to deranged God weirdos”

People keep saying this, but I’m curious why you think so. Why did he go to church all those years -decades-then? It seems important to him. If it was all for his political career that’s pretty cynical. Ditto for his opinions on marriage.

It is also the case that the population of US political officeholders, particularly from the left-leaning progressive side of politics, is bizarrely enriched in the God fearing. Especially relative to expected value in the basal population of similarly smart, educated, worldly and community minded people.

If I wanted a political career my ass would start going to church. Its just how you play the game… And for the record, I agree with you CPP, I doubt he believes it. But you know what, he can say it all he wants, just keep the increased fuel efficiency standards, cap and trade, health care reform etc. etc., coming…

That’s like saying scientists who claim to be atheist are only doing so so they fit in with other scientists. You know, science being a profession dominated by atheists and all.

Bullshit. Outside of paranoid right winger fantasy nobody in science gives a flying fuck about the religious practices of our peers. The fact that the beliefs of one Francis Collins are such a huge exception just spotlights the fact that we have no freaking idea what the religious beliefs of anyone else are…until they decide to make a big deal out of it for some reason. there is simply no reason for anyone to “fit in” by declaring atheism when in fact s/he is not. at worst, a person might be motivated simply not to talk about it.

In contrast, from local city council elections on upward the politicians are asked about their religious beliefs. There is no such thing as religious privacy when it comes to the political career.

Outside of paranoid right winger fantasy nobody in science gives a flying fuck about the religious practices of our peers.

Likewise, bullshit. I’ve read a multitude of blogs where people in the sciences claim that christians make piss poor scientists. I would hazard a guess that some of those individuals would have a hard time separating their personal bias from their professinal bias come review time (for manuscripts, grants, etc).

Now, while I’ll readily admit the analogy was not perfect (what analogy ever is?) I’d say I’m damn closer to the mark than you may like to admit.

“…there is simply no reason for anyone to “fit in” by declaring atheism when in fact s/he is not. at worst, a person might be motivated simply not to talk about it.”

Just sit there silently while your scientific peers lob insults at religious people and your holier-than-thou ‘progressive’ friends mock Christians and Catholics day in and day out (oh yeah and blame all the world’s problems on them).

Yes, just keep quiet about your religious preferences and you too can be a successful scientist (or science blogger!)

It depends a bit on what kind of scientist you are, and there is a good deal of pressure to not believe in that “god stuff” in the sciences. Unlike a politician, though, scientists aren’t popularly elected. Sure, there’s a lot of popular pressure for various things and one’s peers have to evaluate you in various ways, but it’s still fundamentally different than the public life of a politician. To whit: it’s easy to imagine one *starting* to go to church to establish political bona fides; it’s (somewhat) less likely that someone will *stop* going to church to establish scientific ones. (I suppose in a small town, um, full of scientists? one might be afraid of church-going and being seen by Prof. Frink at the Big Bang Burger, but most scientists don’t like in the fictional town of Eureka.)

It is absolutely true that a scientist might feel compelled to fake being a non-believer by social pressure, but since our lives are less public, I think that kind of pressure is quantitatively different than for a politician, if not qualitatively so.

That being said, I do think O believes in the godstuff, among other reasons, if you look at what his mentors and friends have said, they all felt he and his family were very conservative in their *behavior* and social comportment, and indeed, one of his mentors said (on The Daily Show at least) that he always assumed O was a Republican from how he comported himself.

While I sympathize with (and am one of) the ardent atheists, this confrontational “you’re either with me or you’re against me” wackaloonity is not good. I know plenty of very smart believers, and very dumb atheists and agnostics. And since the secularists for years have been arguing that one doesn’t have to have religion to be moral, I think it behooves us to admit the empirical evidence that one doesn’t have to be atheist to be smart or rigorous (even if we feel that the two are more likely to co-occur). There are enough exceptions that it simply makes us look hysterical.